District pilots AI course for teachers; survey finds many educators uncomfortable with AI and privacy protections

Oxford Area School District leaders described an ongoing pilot professional development course on artificial intelligence for educators and shared pre‑course survey results that underscore significant teacher concern about AI use and student privacy.

Assistant Superintendent Dr. Billings Jones said the district is piloting a course that introduces AI vocabulary, instructional use cases and guidance on academic integrity. The program encourages teachers to explore varying levels of AI use—ranging from no‑AI to full instructional integration—while protecting student privacy and academic standards.

She stressed the district will enable Microsoft Co‑pilot for instructional support but will not enable ChatGPT on district systems: "we're not enabling chat GPT nothing of that," Dr. Billings Jones said, adding that the district is evaluating tools for confidentiality and privacy compliance before adoption.

Administrators reported that approximately 281 educators were participating in the course pilot; an initial pre‑assessment showed many teachers were uncomfortable with classroom AI use. Dr. Billings Jones cited survey findings that nearly 50% of respondents were not yet comfortable allowing students to use AI tools for learning activities and that about 61% were not yet comfortable protecting student privacy when integrating AI.

The district will continue to collect course evaluations, administer a post‑course survey and use results to design guidelines that maintain academic integrity while allowing purposeful AI integration.

Why it matters: AI tools are increasingly available to teachers and students; local policy and training decisions determine how those tools are used and how student privacy is protected. The board discussed expanding the topic into future policy work and district training plans.